And it comes with a rather high-minded introduction by list-collator Jonathan Taylor, declaring that

misandry in academia is not merely a collection of infrequent and disassociated anomalies arising from individuals uninfluenced by supportive or acquiescent peer groups. On the contrary, it is culturally pervasive in academia in a way that cannot be reasonably characterized as incidental or coincidental.

Indeed, Taylor hopes that his list will be

a useful resource for those new to men’s issues in academia. It should also be useful to advocates as a “go-to” resource for identifying and referring others the kind of hostile learning environment that has become pervasive in certain academic circles.

Given all this, you might expect his list of quotes to be a little more carefully vetted than the typical cut-and-pasted lists of Terrible Feminist Quotes that are passed around on the internet by antifeminists. You may recall that when I and a few others fact-checked one of these lists a while back we discovered that many of the quotes were either taken out of context in a misleading way, or made up, or taken from fictional works. Or were from people no one had ever heard of an who might not have been feminists at all.

Even a quick glance at Taylor’s list reveals that it has a lot in common with these lists: alongside a number of quotations from well-known radical feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Mary Daly, he includes quotes from little-known academics and an assortment of random student activists, one of them identified only as “Ginny.” How typical are any of these views in academia? Taylor makes no attempt to find out.

The list doesn’t confine itself to feminists, quoting from one “traditionalist women’s college group” and even from Margaret Thatcher.

And many of the quotes are scanty — simple one liners — which leads me to wonder if there is anything in the context that makes these sometimes shocking quotations a bit less shocking.

Still others aren’t actually “misandrist” at all.

I don’t have the time or the energy to fact-check all of these quotes — nor do I have access to the academic journals many of them came from.

But several of them grabbed my attention, and I was able to track down the original quotes in context — only to discover that Taylor’s abridged quotes completely distort their original meanings.

Let’s start with this truncated quote from Marilyn French:

“As long as some men use physical force to subjugate females, all men need not. The knowledge that some men do suffices to threaten all women. He can beat or kill the woman he claims to love; he can rape women…he can sexually molest his daughters… THE VAST MAJORITY OF MEN IN THE WORLD DO ONE OR MORE OF THE ABOVE.”

– Dr. Marilyn French, The War Against Women, p. 182, her emphasis.

This seems shocking: Is French really suggesting that the vast majority of men either beat, rape, or kill women and/or molest their own daughters?

Actually, no. Those little ellipses in the quote are a clue that there’s more to the story here. When you look at what French actually wrote, you can see that her claims are not actually shocking at all. Here’s the original quote, which you can find for yourself by looking up the book on Amazon and going to page 182 of the preview available on the site.

As you can see, French’s argument is completely different from what the truncated quote would suggest. But quoting a feminist suggesting that the majority of men might “treat women disrespectfully” isn’t very exciting, is it? Let’s pretend she said something hair-raising instead!

It’s clear that Taylor didn’t get the quote from French’s book directly; when I searched for the quote online, I found the exact same truncated version, with the same ellipses and the same CAPITAL LETTERS on an assortment of right-wing and antifeminist sites, in one case attributed to the wrong book by French. Clearly he got the quote from one of these sites — Conservapedia, perhaps? — and didn’t bother to spend five minutes trying to fact-check it as I did. It’s also pretty clear that whoever edited the original quote down did so in a deliberate attempt to misrepresent what French said.

The next bit of fact-checking was a bit more straightforward, because this time Taylor provided a clickable link to the source on Google Books. Here’s the quote:

“Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.”

– Dr. Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified, p. 82.

Curious about the context, I clicked on the link and saw that she was defining rape in this way as a sort of thought experiment rather than as a legal category:

While this is not quite as dramatic a misrepresentation as the chopped-up French quote, the context here changes the meaning of the quote quite dramatically.

One more quote in the list caught my eye:

Consent as ideology cannot be distinguished from habitual acquiescence, assent, silent dissent, submission, or even enforced submission. Unless refusal or consent or withdrawal of consent are real possibilities, we can no longer speak of ‘consent’ in any genuine sense.

I’m not going to bother to fact-check this one, because, well, this argument is completely reasonable: if a person cannot say “no,” or cannot withdraw consent, then we really aren’t talking about genuine consent at all, are we?

Taylor claims to be fighting “misandry” in the academy. It looks to me — in these examples, at least — like he’s fighting against straw feminists and a meaningful notion of consent.

Comments

@HeatherN
Oh, good, they included the ol’ pearl of wisdom that “lynchings in America are proof of misandry! Also, what is racism? No, never heard of it.”
Verily, we are rebutted. Time to pack up shop and turn our tools over to the MRM.

I have to wonder, when your original argument is that someone (French) is accusing the majority of men of threatening, killing and raping men, and it’s pointed out that the list of things that “the vast majority of men do” contains mere disrespect… how is it rational to pretend that it was not a quotemine? And how does saying that the full quote accurately points out that a wide range of behaviours are involved in subjugating people count as 1) a defence against accusations of quote mining or 2) evidence of misandry?

I’d really like to be able to be forgiving and recognise that a lot of people are inept when it comes to rational discussion, but the guy claims to be “a former college instructor of composition and argumentation,” so… what? Was he just terrible at his job, or does he make arguments like this while knowing that they’re vacuous?

katz: There are, of course, gay-friendly Protestant denominations; I’m aware of this, as I used to be an Episcopalian (former acolyte, actually) and my mom still is.

But religion in America can be remarkably susceptible to geography. In some parts of the country, it’s difficult to go church-shopping for churches outside a specific range on the Christian spectrum. (Anecdata time. I’ve got a friend from Huntsville, Alabama. When she was going to Germany for a class trip in high school, one of her teachers told her, “Now, you might not be able to find a church over there.” She replied, “Oh, it’s okay–I’m a Lutheran.” Teacher: “Well, that’s what I mean, they may not have those over there.”)

So if you were raised fundamentalist, or even one of the more hard-core Baptist sects, then you decide to change faith, you may not be able to find one conveniently. Instead of leaving, you go the non-denominational route. Others no doubt shift WITHIN the Protestant category; and still others may even push their denomination to make the switch themselves.

(Anecdata time. I’ve got a friend from Huntsville, Alabama. When she was going to Germany for a class trip in high school, one of her teachers told her, “Now, you might not be able to find a church over there.” She replied, “Oh, it’s okay–I’m a Lutheran.” Teacher: “Well, that’s what I mean, they may not have those over there.”)

My only thought is that why would any intelligent,self-respecting(okay I know they don’t acknowledge the existence of such) woman would want to have anything to do with someone who has less empathy than a lentil.

lol @ not being able to find Lutheran churches in Germany (someone needs to brush up on their church history).

But I’m not arguing with your reasoning–I’m saying that the numbers do not support it. The growth in that category would be insufficient to explain the gay-acceptance trend even if all mainline Protestants were gay-unfriendly and all non-specified Christians were gay-accepting, but they aren’t, so the percentage of people who left a gay-unfriendly Protestant denomination for a gay-friendly non-specified church is going to be less than 6%, and so the correlation is going to be even weaker.

If you look at films/books before the war women were a lot more equal than they were after the war.

What I think happened is that the combination of 10 million+ men returning to the workforce, and reduction of the distortions in the economy as a result of war production meant there was an absolute reduction in available jobs, and keeping women in, “men’s work” wasn’t socially acceptable.

As the economy reccovered (helped by the Marshall Plan, and the distortions caused by the Cold War) there was; as a result of the gains labor had made up to the ’30s, enough money to make the ideal of, “the nuclear family” (that cornerstone of Victorian Morality), something which could be afforded on a large scale.

Then we got the ’70s. Not only was there the indulgence of the youth born after the war (the Baby Boom was a return to normal, not so much a sudden increase, as a contrast to the depressions in birthrate caused by 1: the Great Depression, and 2: WW2; which also caused a large increase in educational investment at the primary/secondary level; to go with the increase in the post-secondary level created by the GI Bill).

We also had the changes caused by the increase in available income to the middle classes from Social Security. The greatest boost to the economy from SS was that people no longer had to spend so much keeping their parents alive. Married to the prevalence of Defined Benefit Pensions (again, see unions) and a huge number of people (male and female) were sent to college.

Where a lot of them asked, “why is society so screwed up?” The Vietnam War just made it more obvious things were screwed up.

Then we got fucking Reagan, (who started his political career narrating a propaganda album against Medicare; doctor’s wives were supposed to gather other women in their neighborhoods to listen to it, so they would tell their husbands how bad it was).

And he killed the Air Traffic Controllers Union (expanding on Taft-Hartley) and started privatising every damn thing; and got into bed with the fundies (whom he didn’t much like, but hey they voted for him, so…).

So I wonder what would have happened without WW2, because the Soviet Union wouldn’t have been so large as to be seen as the sort of existential threat it became.

(Anecdata time. I’ve got a friend from Huntsville, Alabama. When she was going to Germany for a class trip in high school, one of her teachers told her, “Now, you might not be able to find a church over there.” She replied, “Oh, it’s okay–I’m a Lutheran.” Teacher: “Well, that’s what I mean, they may not have those over there.”)

Different anecdata: A friend went on a school trip to Bavaria. They collected everyone and told them to line up; where they started asking religious affliation (this was middle 1980s, there was a lot of nervous reaction). The reason… there was a state tax on some religions. When they got to my friend she told them Lutheran.

They didn’t know what she meant.

Not only different terms, but I’ll wager the belief systems of Germans who think of themselves as “followers of Luther” are quite different.

Ah, but she wasn’t talking about a singular person, Futrelle. She was talking about women as a political class and the concept of consent itself, regardless of any situational interpersonal context. That’s why she does not refer to “consent’” in unqualified terms – like normal people do – but instead as “consent as ideology.”

In other words, to Dr. Pateman consent is a concept that only exists in the minds of ideologues. By referring to consent as “an ideology” and placing herself in opposition to it, she is disagreeing with the concept of consent itself.

The quote from Pateman basically means that “habitual acquiescence, assent, silent dissent, submission, or … enforced submission” are merely part of consent as an ideology and do not constitute real consent. Nowhere in the quote does she imply that consent is a purely ideological concept. Are they this stupid?

Regarding hypermasculinity, trust me, it’s in the gay world too. From what I’ve seen, people seem to be okay with queer men… as long as they don’t “act queer.” You know, good ol’ red-blooded American boys! There’s a LOT of it, so I have absolutely no problem understanding that gay rights might be improving, but gender roles are still iron.

Also, queer/trans rights has been HAULING, especially since the AIDS epidemic. I mean, gay trans men weren’t even acknowledged to EXIST until 1988. Whenever anyone asks me if I’d want to go back in time, I always shake my head and go, “HELL NO.” Shit, any time before I was born, I’d be fuckin’ HOSED.

And big lolz at the poor Lutheran in Alabama. I’m from Texas, and while I was in a big city with a bunch of denominations, as a kid, I was only aware of two Christian denominations: Southern Baptists and Catholics. (Which was what my mother and father were brought up as, respectively.) And that… pretty much sums up a lot of the landscape.

How quaint. Once again, that article does link to sources here, and does present snippets of those sources, but still twists the words just slightly and marches right past most others without comment.

I’m not a genius debater or even particularly intelligent, but even I grasp that Liz Kelly quote about a “Continuum of pressure” means something entirely different than it is presented as, and I found the original quote to point that out… to which the response is taking what I wrote about that amended, original quote and pretending it applies to the version of the quote on his list.

But that’s a lie. The actual quote from the actual book doesn’t end at “Sex”, it ends a few words later at “There is no clear distinction, therefore, between consensual sex and rape, but a continuum of pressure, threat, coercion and force. The concept of a continuum validates the sense of abuse women feel when they do not freely consent to sex and takes account of the fact that women may not define their experience at the time or over time as rape“.

Plus, the lead in also kind of shifts the entire thing rather bloody radically towards a reasonable, nuanced approach to rape.

Plus, my original comment included a line that indicates that false accusations are terribad (which they are) and that rape is terribad (which it is) so claiming that that no one said so is also a lie.

And the best part? I wrote that, in a 174 word comment reply to this amended, rebutal article…. which the site owner deleted without answering.

Had a bunch of reactionary Catholic spouting false doctrines (as in their interpretation of what was/wasn’t acceptable for a Catholic university to do was plainly hypocritical, and driven by a secular agenda).

I took them to task.

They never published it.

p.s. for what it’s worth I didn’t expect them to allow it out of moderation; They are a fairly large, for such things, web-presence, and I was being all sorts of unfair, like quoting doctrine. So pointed to their piece, and made my reply in my Lj.

lol @ not being able to find Lutheran churches in Germany (someone needs to brush up on their church history).

But I’m not arguing with your reasoning–I’m saying that the numbers do not support it. The growth in that category would be insufficient to explain the gay-acceptance trend even if all mainline Protestants were gay-unfriendly and all non-specified Christians were gay-accepting, but they aren’t, so the percentage of people who left a gay-unfriendly Protestant denomination for a gay-friendly non-specified church is going to be less than 6%, and so the correlation is going to be even weaker.

Okay, I think I’m explaining myself poorly, based on the above, because it shows I’ve failed to convey my position. The bolded portion is the exact opposite of what I’m trying to suggest.

My spitball hypothesis is that when people in a conservative faith are confronted with some sort of challenge to their beliefs, they really have four choices:

1: Remain in the church, trying to effect change from within (or, alternately, just trying to ignore the cognitive dissonance).
2: Change to a new church, one that has a closer alignment with their changing views of right and wrong. This won’t have any effect on the Protestant numbers, really, since people will still identify as Protestant (but a former Southern Baptist may now be an ELCA Lutheran).
3: Maintain a spiritual faith, but abandon organized religion based on an inability to find a church matching their new take on things. If many do this, the “Christian non-denominational” category will increase.
4: Go for some flavor of agnosticism/atheism, and leave faith behind. If many do this, the “None” category will increase.

If this holds, then in times of dramatic social change, you’ll see the effects of 3 & 4, but not in full proportion to the degree of attitude shift (since some folks will opt for the first two options, instead). And that is what we see here–a gain of about 11 percentage points spread between those two categories, which is, as you note, less than the percentage of people who actually changed their minds on gay rights.

The Catholic numbers are probably the biggest stumbling-block, here, which you pointed out–they should come down more. One possible explanation–I’ve encountered far more ‘cultural Catholics’, who identify as such even though they haven’t set foot in a church for a decade or more, than other denominations. So a disillusioned Baptist might opt for “non-Denominational Christian”, while a disillusioned Catholic would still identify as such.

Note one thing that, if accurate, this suggests to atheists like myself–we CAN’T just sit around and argue people out of their faith. Our best hope is actually pushing social-justice agendas, because those cause the kinds of societal shifts that produce the introspection that results in a decision to leave the faith entirely. In short, the Asshat Atheist brigade aren’t just shitty human beings, they’re even shitty at being atheists.

Why do these guys ALWAYS write in the same forced, pseudo-intellectual, eighth-grade style language? It’s as if they write what they feel, and then go through with a thesaurus and replace all the three-letter words with eight-to-ten letter words. Cringe.

Freemage: Sorry, I did misunderstand you; earlier people were suggesting that a decline in religious belief might be the explanation of the trend. Of course “people’s personal beliefs may affect their religious affiliation” is a perfectly sensible thesis.

Our best hope is actually pushing social-justice agendas, because those cause the kinds of societal shifts that produce the introspection that results in a decision to leave the faith entirely.

Plenty of people are both religious and SJ-oriented. Hell, I became a UU so I could be part of more organized activism.

In short, the Asshat Atheist brigade aren’t just shitty human beings, they’re even shitty at being atheists.

Apparently I’m shitty at being an atheist, since I just can’t summon any fucks to give about other people believing in the supernatural. Thanks for reminding me why I’ve never felt comfortable in movement atheism.

@Pecunium I’ve seen “spreadhead” a few times. I don’t think everyone uses it, but I see it enough that I wonder what it’s about.

LBT: “Our” there was not meant to mean my fellow posters here, but rather, my fellow atheists and I. I certainly don’t expect folks who are not atheists to care about this.

Pecunium: Well, yes, same here. But my point was that the Asshat Atheists aren’t even succeeding at enlightened self-interest, let alone altruistic conduct.

emily: I acknowledged that there are plenty of SJ-active churches. My point was that the conservative churches are often the source of direct opposition on SJ issues. So, expanding pro-SJ attitudes means more people leaving those specific churches–which, in some cases, means more atheists.

As for not caring about other people’s beliefs or lack thereof… I’m not saying you should. “Atheism” isn’t a social-justice issue, obviously. I would argue that secularism–ie, the old “Church/State separation” bit–is an SJ issue, but I argued that even when I was a believer myself.

I personally believe that some supernatural beliefs have very specific harmful consequences on the social justice level; but I’m perfectly willing to not fret about someone’s beliefs that don’t fall into that category.

I’ve got to parrot LBT here. I am an atheist, yet I have no real desire to see more of us.
You hear a lot of stories of how isolating it is to be an atheist in religious communities… I never felt that around religious people – I live in a fairly secular part of the world. I have, however, felt it in atheist communities. Mention that you believe that women are people, and half of the supposedly intellectually superior people around you will act as if you just told them you believe in dowsing and accuse you of being irrational and brainwashed, while firing fallacies off like they’ll explode if they hang on to them. Almost all of the other half just shut up, and you’re left with about three people trying to reason with a group who quickly turn to demonising Rebecca Watson and refusing to discuss the actual issues.

I’m far more interested in cultivating decency in those around me than atheism.

Me three. I’ve always been an atheist, way back to arguing about it with the minister during the brief period where my parents attempted to send me to Sunday School in kindergarten. While my circle of friends has always been heavy on other atheists and agnostic people I’m not seeing any reason why I should worry about the existence of religious people who aren’t using their faith as an excuse to work against social justice issues, or try to make less of them and more people like me.

As an example of why, take Mr C’s favorite aunt. She’s a queer, feminist, socially liberal, pot smoking classic northern California hippie. She’s also Catholic. Would somehow making her less Catholic make her a nicer person or a better ally in terms of all the stuff I care about (and that most other people here do too)? I’m just not seeing it. She’s fine as she is, and in some ways I think her religion actually reinforces her social justice focus.

TL;DR – If someone is a good person and a good ally their spiritual beliefs or lack thereof are none of my business.

The idea that people promote ideas based entirely on their religion is wrong anyway; the ideals people form is based more on the values they were raised with, the social circles they exist in, and established ideas in the person (i.e. someone who is against homosexual behavior because they were raised with the understanding that is wrong and dwell in a social circle that disapproves of it will cull the bible looking for quotes on why it’s wrong.) I also think it’s bizarre how some atheists hold a dogmatic belief in a pseudo-scientific version of evolutionary psychology that’s more akin to social Darwinism, and will tell people who don’t share their exact worldview that they aren’t being rational.

In my experience it seems more like religious people often adapt their religion to fit their personal value system by disregarding the bits that don’t work for them. Mr C’s auntie being a perfect example.

Here’s my thing about atheism: all that unites atheists is a LACK of belief in something. That’s a hugely variegated group of people! You’ve got Buddhists, and Jews, and people who worship gods as metaphorical thoughtforms and people who want nothing to do with deities but worship more minor supernatural entities. You’ve got UUs and skeptics and rationalists, and you have people like me who believe in gods for other people but want them nowhere near me.

Last I heard, the ONLY thing atheists have in common is a lack of belief in a god or supreme being. Skepticism, rationalism, or common human decency aren’t part of the package. Depending on that definition, I may not even count as an atheist!

Therefore, it’s absurd for me to want more atheists. It’d be like wanting more non-Republicans. Like, sure, in theory, sure, pushing social justice things would cause fewer people to accept some crap Republicans push. But there are plenty of horrible people who AREN’T Republicans, and the assholes will just join create some other party. (See Dixiecrats.) Or, more likely, the Republican party will change to take note of those social changes.

A lot of religions have been around WAY longer than the Republican party. They would not still be alive if they didn’t adjust to social change. I see it way more likely churches will grow less douchey, rather than more people will become atheists.

You’ve acknowledged that SJ isn’t connected with being an atheist; that it’s not precluded by being a theist (or, presumably, any other variety of not-atheist). So what is it at base that makes you want to convert people – which is what it is – to atheism? Is it objection to the idea of someone having other beliefs at all, or other interpretations of life experiences?

One thing this eagerness (generally) on the part of people so eager to convert others ignores is what it’s doing to those people. The assumption that THIS IS TRUTH is a load of baloney, whichever way it’s coming, but more than that, it’s fucking corrosive to assume in general that your belief system is going to make someone happier and more fulfilled or freer than the one they have. If their beliefs aren’t hurting other people, then fucking well leave people alone. Undermining someone that way is all sorts of wrong.

Anecdata: I’ve had one run-in with a Spiritualist who was a capital-C Church type and didn’t like me not toeing her line. I’ve had no crap from people I knew who were born-agains and undoubtedly believed I was going to Hell. I have had crap from sundry Asshole Atheists who’ve sneered that I’m delusional and should see a psychologist.

Curiously enough the actual psychologists I’ve talked to – and not hidden my life with Louis from, because it is the central, the most important part of my inner life – have been nothing but supportive.

So fuck “needing to convert” people. It comes down to “I don’t like your beliefs” too often.

You’ve acknowledged that SJ isn’t connected with being an atheist; that it’s not precluded by being a theist (or, presumably, any other variety of not-atheist). So what is it at base that makes you want to convert people – which is what it is – to atheism? Is it objection to the idea of someone having other beliefs at all, or other interpretations of life experiences?

One thing this eagerness (generally) on the part of people so eager to convert others ignores is what it’s doing to those people. The assumption that THIS IS TRUTH is a load of baloney, whichever way it’s coming, but more than that, it’s fucking corrosive to assume in general that your belief system is going to make someone happier and more fulfilled or freer than the one they have. If their beliefs aren’t hurting other people, then fucking well leave people alone. Undermining someone that way is all sorts of wrong.

Anecdata: I’ve had one run-in with a Spiritualist who was a capital-C Church type and didn’t like me not toeing her line. I’ve had no crap from people I knew who were born-agains and undoubtedly believed I was going to Hell. I have had crap from sundry Asshole Atheists who’ve sneered that I’m delusional and should see a psychologist.

Curiously enough the actual psychologists I’ve talked to – and not hidden my life with Louis from, because it is the central, the most important part of my inner life – have been nothing but supportive.

So fuck “needing to convert” people. It comes down to “I don’t like your beliefs” too often.

I’ve had a lot of people try and convert me, or pray for me to “be healed.” (In my cynical way, I often consider saying, “You want to help me? Got a dollar?”) I find it very tiring and usually sic my husband on them. (Nobody can fight off evangelists like a Southern Baptist.) And I’ve actually known a lot of people from traumatic fundy backgrounds.

It does happen, and more often from the religious than the atheists, just because of sheer numbers. But assholery, in my experience, has little correlation to level of religiousness.

LBT – gods, yes, the odds of having someone go all religious on you would be much higher where you are; Australia’s very different culturally, at least in the cities. (We really need to legislate agin all those USian Mormons being allowed into the country, I swear!) And yes, assholishness doesn’t correlate with religion OR its lack.

Love the idea of Mac frightening off evangelists. 🙂

Personal rant about evangelical atheism coming: no need to read for most people commenting, ‘cos it’s not aimed at you.

Thing that gets me with this is, we don’t have people going around trying to convert others TO religion on this site, or talking about how necessary it is. I haven’t spent time reading Christian, let alone fundamentalist, or any other sort of religious sites, so I haven’t read scads of their conversion rubbish.

BUT I’ve seen plenty of the “we must convert to atheism” shit on other sites, and while nobody here now is an Asshole Atheist, freemage’s reference to this has riled me.

Because – and freemage, I hope you’ll read and think about this – this sort of stuff is an attack I take personally, because it says, in essence, that my life should be rearranged to suit someone else’s non-belief.

It says my marriage doesn’t exist.

It says all the contact I’ve had with those who’ve passed over isn’t real.

It says something as simple as the cuddle I had this morning, the feel of an arm around my shoulder, and a discussion of beard stubble, didn’t happen.

And what does it suggest instead?

Fucking NOTHING. Literally nothing.

I’ve been there. I was atheist, or an agnostic so close it didn’t matter.

Y’know something? It wasn’t reading atheist stuff that got me away from the idea of a Biblical God, or the horrors of that idea, the either-or black and white thinking. It was breaking away from the concept of an anthropomorphic deity at all, and it was what I’d call a Spritualist book, and Louis himself, who did that.

That did wonders for my mental health, for my happiness and fulfilment. It’s even had benefits materially, because writing about it made me friends and has taken me to the US to meet them, twice.

I have my own doubts and questions to deal with. I call it jerkbrain and the materialistic default in this country, and the ridiculous “it’s too good to be true” notion that seems to worm its way into everything. I’ve thought and thought about what’s real and since there’s no proof either way, and the evidence I’ve experienced is for me to interpret, nobody else, then I’ll go with my own REASONED conclusion, thankyouverymuch.

When people talk blithely about how important it is for other people to be atheists, maybe they should just stop and think about what the fuck they’re actually suggesting, and pull their heads in.

/steaming

(Apologies if this turned into That Conversation, but given we’re not hiding the whole business of the Great Divorce, which seems to have been a large factor in That Conversation, I really wanted to get this out without hedging.)

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.